A music video or video clip is a short film meant to present a visual representation of a popular musicsong. They were introduced in the early 1980s. The TV station MTV, or "Music Television" originated the format of end-to-end music video programming without any conventional programs.

The first music videos were called Soundies and were made in the 1940s for for the Panoram visual jukebox. These were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand, made for playing. Thousands of Soundies were made, mostly of jazz musicians, but also torch singers, comedians, and dancers.

Before the Soundie, even dramatic movies typically had a musical interval, but the Soundie made the music the star and virtually all the name jazz performers appeared in Soundie shorts, many still available on compilation video tapes or DVDs.

The Panoram jukebox with eight three-minute Soundies were popular in taverns and night spots, but the fad faded during World War II.

The very first short musical films made specifically for television, however, were the Snader Telescriptions[?], more than 1000 short musical presentations filmed for use a television filler between 1950 and 1954. The Snader Telescriptions covered the entire musical landscape. Although most of them were of conventional pop performers, there were many rhythm and blues, jazz, and country music performers. Over the years, the Telescriptions have been re-released many times as compilations, such as Showtime at the Apollo.

In the 1960s, French technology developed for the aerial photography during the war was adapted to create the Scopitone, a modern visual jukebox. The Scopitone was a hit in France with fairly primitive scenes of bands playing, but when it was introduced into the US, the videos took on a vivid quality, with crooners wandering through crowds of girls in bikinis or "jungle" furs. The Scopitone also was a hit, but involvement of organized crime led to its demise, just as rock and roll was being revitalized, too late for Scopitone.

The history of the modern music video has its roots in the early 1960s with The Beatles first major motion picture, A Hard Day's Night in 1964, which included musical segments that resemble today's music videos. That same year, the band began filming short promotional films for their songs which were then aired on television variety shows. By the time the band stopped touring in 1966, they used the promotional films to tour for them. Soon it was common place for artists to do this, and bands like The Byrds and The Beach Boys were also filming promotional films.

During the 1980s promotional videos became pretty much de rigueur for most recording artists, a rise which was famously parodied by UKBBC television comedy program Not The Nine O'Clock News who produced a spoof music video; Nice Video, Shame About The Song.

"Thriller" by Michael Jackson (unusually cinematic for its time, including use of at that time 'cutting edge' special effects. This video was also unusually long (15 minutes), and framed the actual musical content within a wider narrative context)